The white anger and raw grief I was feeling following the killing of George Floyd have abated. In my previous blog, I expressed incredulity that the police officers could have behaved as they did at all, let alone in the cold light of day, with multiple witnesses. That disbelief is no longer present. It has been replaced by an understanding of how this was able to happen. In the intervening weeks, I’ve watched documentaries and have read articles which have revealed the depth of the rot: video footage of a man being restrained in a choke hold for selling water without a license; a student at Naropa University picking up litter outside his home, using a metal stick to avoid having to bend, being accused of carrying a dangerous object resulting in multiple police cars being called to assist. Both were Black of course. I’ve seen the names of scores of Black men and women on placards and in articles who did not survive their encounters with the police.
I’ve heard the killing of George Floyd described as a public lynching. This fits with what I’ve learned: that when lynchings (as I’ve always conceived them to be i.e. death by hanging from a tree) were prevalent, they were often planned events. The public was invited to watch and Sheriffs were present; indeed, in a previous era, it was the role of the police to find and capture people who’d been enslaved and who’d escaped. They were seen as property not as people. The history and practice of devaluing the lives of Black men and women goes deep and the cognitive dissonance I experienced just weeks ago has been replaced by: “Oh, so this is how it was able to happen. There’s a context for it; a mindset at play. It didn’t happen out of nowhere.” I confess to feeling slightly sick as I write this. This really has been a journey of connecting the dots.
Just yesterday I watched a re-run of ‘Black is the new Black’, a series in which well-known British personalities speak of their experiences of being Black. As woman of Caribbean heritage born, brought up and living in the UK, the impression that stayed with me when it first aired in 2016 was once of celebration, a sense of “Look how far we’ve come.” And we have come far as a society; there are so many more representations of Black people on screen, in positions of some influence, so much more respect given and contributions celebrated than in previous generations. However, watching it again last night in a post-George Floyd world, it was the stories of the racist incidents that struck me — not incidents of a physical variety thank goodness, but the cause of great injury nonetheless: The actress Thandie Newton being told in a British newspaper on winning a BAFTA that she’s not really British as her father is Nigerian. Actor David Harewood as a nine-year-old football fan going to a game on his own and, as he was walking to his seat, picking up racist words being directed at him, his nine-year-old brain hardly able to process it, and turning around and leaving. He’s never been to a match on his own since. John Sentamu, until recently Archbishop of York, speaks of being stopped driving home late at night and asked to get out of his car in the rain. He complied. The officer eventually noticed his ‘dog collar’ and said “Oops”. That response spoke volumes to Sentamu. Comedienne Gina Yashere being stopped in LA and on hearing her accent the officer said: “Oh you’re British. I thought you were Black.” That too is a fascinating and revealing response.
When I was studying for my Masters in Sociolinguistics, I read an extract from the autobiography of the civil rights activist, Angela Davis, which spoke directly to the relationship between language and perception. It told of an experience during the 1960s in Birmingham, Alabama when she and her sister, Fania, spontaneously formed a plan to walk into a shoe shop and ask, with heavy French accents, to see a pair of shoes. At the sight and sound of two young Black women speaking a foreign language, the shop assistant raced to serve them. They were not led to the back of the shop to be served by a Black assistant as would have happened normally. Rather, frustrated by the communication difficulties (as, for the purposes of the exercise, Angela Davis spoke no English at all and her sister’s English was less than elementary) the assistants sent for the Manager who was equally eager to serve. He wanted to know where they were from and what they were doing in the United States. “It’s very seldom that we get to meet people like you, you know.” The White people in the shop were at first confused when they saw two Black people waiting in the ‘Whites Only’ section, but when they heard their accents and conversations in French they too seemed pleased and excited by seeing black people from so far away …
This demonstrates that skin-color does not necessarily cause one to be perceived asBlack. Issues of class, gender, language all intersect to create perception and to affect experience. This is the reason I capitalize Black, White and People of Color and use the term ‘racialized as Black’ or ‘racialized as White’. It interrupts the sense of ‘business as usual’, and creates a pause when we can question the assumptions surrounding Color and Race, and we can interrogate their role in structuring societies. (More of this in a future blog.) However, in identifying as White or Black, it’s easy for fear, shame, blame and guilt to reign supreme, whether in those racialized as White as a result of injustices meted out to people racialized as Black, or of those racialized as Black as a result of being at the effect of systemic inequalities for decades and centuries.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, I’ve been learning a great deal that I’d previously not wanted to look at, and feeling more than has felt comfortable. As emotionally taxing as it’s been, it’s also felt necessary to feel, not to look away but to acknowledge historical and current realities. I’ve also found it vital to stay conscious, to not get sucked down the rabbit hole, centuries deep as it is, and to pull myself out of the heaviness of the anger and grief. It’s been crucial to feel, yes, but to get stuck there would only serve to fuel blame, shame and a sense of victimhood. Neither healthy nor helpful in contributing to a solution. So what to do? Each of us will answer that question for ourselves and do what we feel called to do.
For me, the depth of injustice made possible by division and separation calls from me a depth of response that speaks as powerfully for the complementary energies of inclusivity and unity. And clearly I’m not alone. The international outcry in the wake of George Floyd’s death is already speaking to this energy of connectedness. It’s spawned multiple corporate and institutional responses, such as the principles passionately expressed by the US branch of the Royal Society of Arts as well as individual expressions of solidarity and, yes, love, such as this poignant photographic offering of Black Britain.
In the coming weeks and months, I’ll be using the passion that’s been generated within me to share my perspectives on a number of issues including White privilege; why I don’t talk about Race (and not just to White people); what I’ve learned about how ‘the system’ is designed to function; what I’m learning about what it means to be human and why being the change we seek is more than just a nice notion.
There’s a momentum that’s been generated in the wake of George Floyd’s death — and that of the countless others who we now know preceded him — a momentum which is creating a dismantling of systems and revision of practices no longer resonant with who we’ve become as a global society; a wave that seems to be carrying us towards greater transparency, equality and justice. Who could possibly have foreseen such a powerful legacy? It’s up to each of us to do what we feel called to do to ensure that this remains a movement forward, and not just a moment.
Jennifer Bright is a life coach, interviewer and writer on social justice, human potential and personal fulfillment.